PERL

Building on the initial PERL project which ran from 2008-2011, the stated aims of the PERL2 project as a whole were to strengthen individual awareness of sustainable and responsible living, identify processes and new skills, share insights and cultivate partnerships. 

Within this wider project, the first work package – Bridging the knowledge-action gap – was dedicated to values-based indicators, and designed to apply learning from the successful ESDinds project within the formal education sector. While traditional models of Education for Sustainability focus on the dire consequences of what has gone wrong, this work strand fostered a more positive and constructive approach, based on helping students to understand their values and create visions of the future that they want. There were four key objectives, as follows:

• To prepare a toolkit for teachers explaining the use of the ‘WeValue’ approach, developed during the ESDinds project
• To train teachers in the use of the toolkit
• To translate the toolkit into Spanish or Portuguese
• To test the toolkit in two schools in different EU countries

An early finding was that merely changing the wording of the ‘WeValue’ materials, initially created for civil society organisations, was not enough to make them relevant and useful for busy teachers. Rather, it was necessary to separate out three different applications of the ‘WeValue’ approach – teaching and learning, strategic planning, and evaluation – and develop each one as a separate toolkit.

New indicators and activities, tailored specifically for schools, were also found to be necessary. Through pilot tests in secondary schools in the UK and Finland, we were able to identify which activities worked well and which were less successful within different contexts, e.g. whole-class sessions versus Student Council meetings. Detailed findings are available in the toolkit testing report and further tests are ongoing at a school in the Netherlands.

The findings of the workgroup were presented at the PERL project conference held in March 2015 at UNESCO, Paris.The values-based indicators approach has attracted attention within the context of the Global Action Plan for Education for Sustainable Development and the 10-Year Framework of Programmes, and new large-scale funding bids are planned.

Findings from the project have already been cited in the International Environment Forum’s response to a consultation on the report Indicators and a Monitoring Framework for Sustainable Development Goals: Launching a data revolution for the SDGs, published by the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) in January 2015. In this report, it was noted that our work provides a practical way of responding to ‘Complementary National Indicator 4.1 [Percentage of girls and boys who acquire skills and values needed for global citizenship and sustainable development by the end of lower secondary education]’, and may be useful for developing the national benchmarks called for by SDSN in relation to this indicator.